Happy Birthday to
Nick Nolte
68 today
Big challenge for Mr. Nolte - try finding a picture on the net where his hair looks like it's been combed that week. Nick often turns up in films when you least expect him - which is why I'm looking forwrd to seeing My Own Love Song later this year.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Nick Nolte
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Film News (07/02/09)
An unbelievable busy week for film news. So crowded in fact we'll just dive straight into it.
King Lear
You wait years before a decent King Lear adaptation and then two come at once. Last year Anthony Hopkins signed on to play the aging monach who splits his kingdom, under the watchful gaze of Joshua Michael Stern; this week it's Al Pacino railing at the storm and reuniting with his Merchant of Venice director Michael Radford. Now I love King Lear, it's the play that got me into acting, but I doubt both of these will be released - so which will it be? My moneys on Al, but I'd appreciate your thoughts.
Miral
Julian Schnabel is set to begin principle photography on his Israeli-Palestinian epic Miral in April. Starring Hiam Abbas (The Visitor) as a Palestinian to runs a orphanage in Jersulam the film will show how the relationship between the 2 nations has developed over the last 50 years. It's all going to be filmed on location and I persanally cannot wait to see a film that puts this extraordinary conflict into some perpective.
Moneyball
It's extemely difficult to keep tracks of Steven Soderbergh, but with the delays on Cleo it looks like he's bumped Moneyball up to the top of his things to do list. The film concerns the development of a computer algorithm to selct the best baseball team with a limited budget, fantasy baseball if you will, only done by a real team manager. If that doesn't make your inner geek glow I don't know what will. 
Silence
Daniel Day-Lewis and Benicio Del Toro as signed on to play Jesuit priests bringing christianity to Japan in Martin Scorcese's next film. This pairing seems like an excellent one, but I think I'm going to need more to stop me from classifying this as The Mission in a kimono. 
Start
Brandon Koener's "Now the Hell Will Start" has been optioned by 40 Acres and a Mule. The non-fiction novel relates how an African-American soldier murdered his Lieutenant and then escaped into the Burmese jungle eventually being accepted by the natives.
Valentine's Day
Would anyone like to see 10 strangers in Los Angeles briefly connect their lives over Valentine's Day in a variety of forced coincidences and bizarre cupid led entanglements? No? Just me then.
The Ward
I'm not really a horror fan, but Amber Heard (the titular All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) is preparing to enter the Ward. Cue scary noises and tales of long dead mental patients with grudges. And lots of running around semi-naked, probably. 
Out this Week (06/02/09)
Very close call this week, with 3 big acting type films out this week. Doubt is easily third, but that leaves Woody Allen and David Fincher duking out to see who's tops. But only one of these films is showing where I can see it so watching Brad Pitt age backwards is this weeks recommendation.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Brad Pitt ages backwards in this 3 hour adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. It's managed to pick up 13 Oscar nods, including best picture, surely that's saying something. And did I mention that Brad Pitt ages backwards.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●●●●●○
Doubt
Filmed version of compelling stage success about a nun who suspects a Priest of abusing a boy but has no proof. Almost unique in this day and age in that it allows the audience to make up their mind as to the guilt of Father Flynn.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●●●●○○
The Good, The Bad, The Weird
Korean Western, essentially a remake of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Sounds like a great idea, and 1930s Manchuria always makes for an interesting backdrop, but I hear the film is uneven.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
He's Just Not That into You
All the advertising makes a big deal of the fantastic cast of Ken Kwapis romdramcom, but I just not into Jennifer Aniston, Justin Long and Drew Barrymore. (sorry)
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Naan Kadavul
Tamil film about cannibalism. Written and directed by Bala, includes a Blind Beggar Girl, so that should be interesting.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Punisher: War Zone
It's saying something when Tom Jane is too expensive/ busy wahing his hair to return to this franchise. Director Lexi Alexander's last film was the utterly unconving Elijah Wood football hooligan pic. Really the stars have not aligned for this.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
The Secret of Moonacre
Kiddy fantasy films are still being made, even though they're rarely successful. The UK Film council helped pay for this too. I could literally spit blood.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
This weeks other big oscar film, and the other Scarlett Johannsson release. Woody Allen's Spanish holiday looks like a delightful return to form, and who wouldn't want to be asked by Javier Bardem for a weekedn of art and sex. Closest cinema to me showing this: 163 miles away (Barnet).
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●●●●●○
Friday, 6 February 2009
Rip Torn
Happy Birthday to
Rip Torn
78 today
Rip generally does one good movie for every five movies he's in, and with 7 projects on the go there always the chance that one of them may be watchable. Unless 30 Rock is filling his quota.
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Thursday Talking Point - Suburbia
I thought I'd start a new regular piece. A weekly talking point where I take an aspect of the top film for the previous week, and then basically rant about it for a few hundred words. Last weeks top film was, of course, Revolutionary Road, so this week I'm going to discuss Hollywoods changing attitude to Suburbia.
The word Surburbia, from the latin sub (under) urbs (city), refers to either the residential district located on the outskirts of a city or to the cultural class or subculture that relates to it. Obviously Hollywood's relationship to Suburbia relates mostly to the later half of that definition.
Until the 1940s Hollywood was mainly concerned with the domestic situations of the extremes of society - we'd see the plantations and mansions of the very rich and the tenements and houseboats of the very poor but we rarely venture into the homes of the middle classes. All this changed after the Second World War, when housing boomed and the now synonymous pattern of low density, identical, single-family homes with clearly distinguished areas for residential and commercials developments.
Surburbia was then seen as a place where you could be happy. In It's a Wonderful Life the building and Loans company is focused on getting the investors out of the slums and into purpose built properties; Mildred Pierce realises, only too late, that she was at her most happiest when surrounded by her kids in their quiet detached home.
In the 1950's the cracks began to show. Douglas Sirk illiuminated the high passions and desires hidden beneath layers of repression and societal mores. Meanwhile Nicolas Ray showed us how stultifying the environment was in films like Rebel Without a Cause. In these, and in other hits like Peyton Place, America was slowly dawning on the idea that sububia did not create the idyll that it was planned to do - that instead the crimes and pressures that faced the poorest communities before were being replicated, albeit with gardens.
Over the sixties and seventies surburbia was again ignored by Hollywood, and the rise of social-realism in the UK meant the working classes once again were the subject of choice. Television, though, did not hide from the issue. In America the networks showed a never-ending parade of chirpy families in their idenkit houses. Whether the Brady Bunch or Mary Tyler Moore were living in them hardly mattered - they extolled the virtues of living in the suburbs - but then the programmes were targeted to the surburban audience so this is hardly a surprise.
In the UK suburbia became a rich target for satire. Reginald Perrin in particular showed how the title character was crushed by thr normality of his existence.
It took until the mid 80's before the image of quiet suburbs, family friendly suburbs was wiped away. The 'Burbs showcased how the peaceful environment can turn people crazy with comic possibilities (and let's no forget Little Shop of Horrors mocking the ambitions of moving to the suburbs), but it was through the twisted prism of David Lynch's Blue Velvet that we focused on the seedy underbelly of middle class life.
Since then successive films like American Beauty, Far From Heaven and Revolutionary Road have undermimed the original ideas of those pioneering town planners. It has become almost impossible to imagine a well adjusted family behind the picket fence, instead we convince ourselves of the unspoken rage and loveless marriages, the rebelling teenagers and furtive affairs.
It is difficult to pinpoint what caused Hollywood's change of heart, but I would imagine it is mainly as a result of th sixtis counter-culture and how that laissez-faire, right-on, no repression ideal has permenated society as well as the reclaimation of city centres for the wealthy and trendies. As the poorest move out of the centres they are forced to populate the suburbs, and going full circle back to the 30's Hollywood (essentially a group of rich producers, albeit ex-hippies) is scared of the lower middle classes and their domestic lives and almost longs for a return to the hypocrisy of the suburban 50s.
What do you think? Feel free to debunk my ideas, predict a change of heart about suburbia or pose an alternative theory to why suburbia is so bleak in the comments.
Laura Linney
Happy Birthday to
Laura Linney
45 today
Gorgeous Laura is an unbelievable 45, and whilst I can believe she sprung fully grown from the head of the Gods, I can't believe she's aging at all. Please note how she giggles when lying in the road in the picture. Laura has a couple of upcoming projects which may be worth seeing, however it's more interesting to note that her last 2 films registered on IMDB have yet to get a UK release. Surely The City of her Final Destination and The Other Man must be worth seeing for Ms Linney alone. The frightening thought is that this may just be the start of a trend - will she ever get another cinema release?
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Six Degrees of Separation
1993. Dir: Fred Schepisi. Starring: Stockard Channing, Will Smith, Donald Sutherland, Ian McKellen and Mary Beth Hurt. ●●●●○
A tiny lack of funds has meant I had to skip the cinema, and great Kate, at the weekend and watch a DVD instead, randomly selecting Schepisi's 1993 con movie.
I see you may be confused by that categorisation, but in essence Six Degrees follows a con from the point of view of the mark. The film is told in a semi-flashback style, each development of the story being framed by chat at weddings, dinner parties and gallery openings narrated by sophiticated Manhattanites Ouisa and Flan Kitteridge (Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland). On a seemingly ordinary Saturday night, whilst closing a business deal with Ian McKellen's Suuff eerfrikern accent when Paul (Will Smith) bursts into their apartment bleeding from his stomach.
He then claims to be a) a friend of their kids' from Harvard and b) the son of Sidney Poitier. These both turn out to be gibberish, but he manages to get a clean shirt, a bed for the night and $50. In return he makes dinner, entertains them with incisive, but in retrospect rather dry conversation, and brings a boy from the streets back to the house for some illicit rumpy pumpy.
I won't give any more of the plot away, as it successive twist is both generally satisfying to watch and logical, but ultimately the lives of the Kitteridges and Paul continue to mingle as they find out more about him.
Channing is terrific, as she slowly realises this is not just an after dinner anecdote but a real person that they casually discuss. Her character alone seems to realise that Paul has actually gained very little from them in his trick, aside from giving them fresh perspective on how they view themselves. Sutherland also nails his character but the journey is less dramtic.
The weaker link is definitely Smith, making his transition from Fresh Prince to movie stardom. He's scenes with the Kitteridges are fine with just the right amount of confidence, but he loses his nerve in other places. Especially in the scene with Trent Conway (Anthony Michael Hall), Paul's flamboyant sometime lover. It's an odd scene as Trent is going all doolally over Paul, but when they kiss (an oddly chaste kiss) even the extreme angle of the shot does not hide the gap between their faces and the dubbed "mwoah".
John Guare adapted the film from his 1990 stageplay, which in turn is based on a true incident of a serial con artist pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier, and whilst knowing that gives the film an aura of truth there are still some jarring elements. It seems hard to believe that all the characters fall for Paul's story; and the ending is a trite forced but these are forgiveable issues.
Judianna Makovsky also needs congratulating on finding a stunning array of suits and dresses that make Stockard Channing appear like a supermodel - she's a new name to me, although she has a fascinating CV, including the upcoming Cirque du Freak which should be a nice stretch for her talents.
By the way, for those of you who don't spend your free time playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon, here is Ouisa helpfully explaining the concept: "I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it extremely comforting that we're so close. I also find it like Chinese water torture, that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people."
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Trailer - Gran Torino
It's ridiculously quiet on the birthday front, I've kind of stopped running for a bit (it's snowy here in the UK) and I can't thinki of anything original to write about so here's a wee trailer for a little film, just opened in the US (opening here on the 20th) about an old man struggling to come to terms with a multicultural society.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Personal News (01/02/09)
Crikey it's February already - where did the month go?
The week started with arehearsal for The Bus, and curiously ended that way as well (I've just got home). On Monday we had our second, more serious read through, during which we discussed each scene and how it shaped the whole - looking at how the action unfolds in particular ways and why it does that.
On Friday and today we blocked the First Act, on the off chance you aren't aware blocking involves working out where we're going to stand on the set. Although in my case it mainly concerns how I'm going to abuse the other members of the cast.
I don't want to spoil the staging in any way but we're performing in the main house at the Birmingham Crescent and we will use every inch of the stage to perform in, which is a massive space. Showing our emotional connections is going to b a real toughie, but it's going to be worth it. As I may have said if you're anywhere near Birmingham in the middle of March you must come along to see it.
On Tuesday and Wednesday I was filming a corporate video for Big Umbrella Media, concerning Leadership and Culture. In retrospect I wish I had been more prepared - I never seem to learn how much more difficult it is working with a camera - but I think I left a reasonably good impression. I also picked up a few good contacts so hopefully something will come of that in the near future.
Apparently I can bulls**t pretty well - a number of the scenes were part improvised - so I may start to look into roleplay work much more as a result.
Stuart Whitman
Happy Birthday to
Stuart Whitman
81 today
I won't be a Stuart Whitman apologist and defend his right to be here other than to say "The Cimarron Strip" was a roaring adventure of a TV series, a sort of precuser to the Bonanza type programme, and it's success was largely down to Stuart as Marshall Jim Crown.
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